Trouping the off-colour

0 Al Porter – a blend of retro showbusiness sheen and ribald filth still living at home with his parents and poised to make a fool of himself with Roger Moore, he nevertheless moves in rarefied circles now – taking advice from Graham Norton, rubbing Jimmy Carr up the wrong way and engaging in a game of charity one-upmanship with Brendan O’carroll – Helga, shuffling about in her mismatched clothes, is living on past glories, memories of her life as a glamorous cabaret and trapeze artist.

But a lot has happened since then. She has had a child, who grows up and leaves home. She has had a cat – which seems to grow into something roughly the size of an elephant – then it leaves too. Now she is lonely and bored, with only the radio, a bottle of spirits and her memories for company.

All this is conveyed with a mixture of clowning and mime which tends towards being heavy-handed in both its humour and its pathos. But when Helga shows us her performance, first as her younger self, then as the woman she is now, we see what the play is really getting at: the sadness and loneliness of ageing, and the determinacriminals emphasising punchlines for the supposedly slower or more innocent sections of the crowd.

Anecdotes about being gay in Dubai and “pink collar” boxing are elevated by wellcrafted lines and Porter really settles into his rhythm with tales of his religious and parental instruction, achieving tion to hold on to something of the self in the face of gradually diminishing capacities. SUSAN MANSFIELD Greenside @ Infirmary Street (Venue 236) JJJ Until you’ve seen a group of young people perform an original musical, and had to clamber around them and their set as they attempt a quick turnaround at the end, you’ve not truly experienced the Fringe. Here is your opportunity, thanks to Blue Coat School in Coventry. Based on Brecht’s The Good Person of Szechwan, the show tells the story of a former prostitute who tries to help degenerates, petty gasps for an outré Prince Diana routine. The band can’t truly justify the expense of their presence. But the determination to entertain is part of Porter’s versatile charm, a finely crooned The Curtain Falls proceeding a closing romp through In The Navy. JAY RICHARDSON and beggars, but is exploited and abused in return. The themes are dark, but the bright performances and graffiti-covered set are Day-glo in comparison.

The aesthetic is part fancy dress, part cabaret, with a splash of 1980s flair. But it’s the polished singing, live band of four lads, and catchy Chicago-esque musical numbers, from sixth-former Laurence T Stannard, which create a wall of sound. Director Andrew Kyle’s book doesn’t characterise the wistful Shen Te (Ella Banks) as anything other than a hapless woman floating from one good deed to the next: its bleak message of goodness being crushed is the focal point. However, the energy of the ensemble undermines this with every smile, song and sparkle. SALLY STOTT There is one bit in this show that is utterly compelling, spellbinding, breathtaking. The tension created in these moments by Eric Davies – the man inside the Bastard – is almost unbearable. It is extraordinary. It is even, in one never to be forgotten and probably never to be repeated moment, tender. It is absolutely worth going to the show to see. Around this we get the trademark Red Bastard, master manipulator. He establishes that we are all liars, and that, worst of all, we lie about love.

He explores the parameters of our lies, what is cheating and what is not, and plops us into our appropriate categories: swan, pony or pervert.

He pushes and plays his audience expertly and, seemingly, irresistibly. This is not just Red Bastard’s show. Eric Davies himself gets a lot of stage time and he is very much the marshmallow to the Bastard’s Popping Candy.

This is not a show for the cynical or those of us who have led a particularly “full” life. But Eric and the Bastard get a full standing ovation from the deliriously happy, packed room at the end, so it would seem the sweet, the innocent and the easily embarrassed are still many. KATE COPSTICK We know from Joe Orton that it’s possible to write a badtaste black comedy about death. There can be laughter in extremity. But when the laughter is not forthcoming – and it is in painfully short supply in this Australian two-hander – things quickly look infantile.

In some state of psychotic delusion, Ben Noble’s Phil has murdered his fiancée believing her to be an evil raccoon king (hey, everyone,aren’t the fantasies of the mentally unwell just hilarious!).

Played by Wendy Bos, the corpse hangs around for the comic capers that supposedly follow, but their relationship is as unconvincing as the situation is bleak. The only mercy is that it’s over in 40 minutes. MARK FISHER